When heading out this month, it's useful to keep in mind that there are events only implied here, events that will result in parades, parties, street fairs, & other suchlike occurrences that could mess up your travel / transit plans: leave early, give yourself plenty of time, enough time to enjoy whatever pops up to delay you instead of cursing it. I'm thinking mostly of Pride & Juneteenth, but there's also Bloomsday, & though I think there isn't a local celebration of that, there obviously should be.
Theatrical
ZSpace presents Becoming a Man by P Carl, directed by Lyam B Gabel, the story of a person who lived as a girl, then a queer woman, before transitioning to manhood after age 50, at ZSpace's Steindler Stage from 28 May to 14 June.
Phantom of the Opera returns to the Orpheum from 28 May to 21 June.
On 4 -6 June at ODC, People’s Circus Theatre will combine "circus, dance, and physical theatre" to portray The Unfinished Work of Camille Claudel.
From 18 to 28 June, the Oakland Theater Project presents The Fre by Taylor Mac , directed by Mylo Cardona, "in which a lone Hero searches for order in a society that worships impulse. . . Part mud-riot, part rave, The Fre is a queer, all-ages play that stages polarization inside a literal ball pit. . . ".
On 19 - 21 June at Z Space's Steindler Stage, Fresh Meat Productions presents the Fresh Meat Festival of trans, queer and community performance; featuring "dance, music, drag, theater, and interdisciplinary performance" by Filipinx, the New Voices Bay Area Transgender, Intersex & Genderqueer Chorus, Zuzu Beloved, Shawna Virago, Sean Dorsey Dance. & new works by B DeVeaux, Pangaea, Shawn Lee with Bay Area Independent Chinese Dancers, & JanpiStar.
From 19 June to 12 July at the Potrero Stage, Golden Thread Productions & SFBATCO (the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Company) co-present Arab Spring, a new comedy by Denmo Ibrahim, directed by Nailah Unole didanas’ea Harper-Malveaux, about a recovering addict, his controlling big sister, & their attempts to give their deadbeat Dad an Islamic burial "before his body goes cold".
On 22 - 24 June as part of its Champagne Staged Reading Series at the Ashby Stage, Shotgun Players presents The Gull, an adaptation of Chekhov's The Seagull, written & directed by Tara Blau Smollen, set "in 1938 Oak Bluffs, a historic Black vacation community on Martha’s Vineyard".
From 24 June to 19 July in Z Below, Word for Word & ZSpace present Absolutely Science Fiction! Stories by Ray Bradbury & Kurt Vonnegut, directed by Delia MacDougall; the stories are Bradbury's The Veldt & Vonnegut’s The Big Space F*ck [sic].
From 25 June to 19 July, Theater Rhinoceros presents the west coast premiere of Goat Blood by Mark-Eugene Garcia, directed by Alejandro Torres, about a double date that goes very, very wrong.
Operatic
The San Francisco Opera closes out its season this month, starting with Rossini's The Barber of Seville, conducted by Benjamin Manis & directed by Emilio Sagi, with Figaro played by Joshua Hopkins (28 May & 5, 9, 13, 20 June) & Justin Austin (3, 6, 12, & 21 June, as well as the Encounter on 17 June); Rosina is played by Maria Kataeva (28 May & 5, 9, 13, 20 June) & Hongni Wu (3, 6, 12, & 21 June, as well as the Encounter on 17 June), Count Almaviva is Levy Sekgapane (28 May & 5, 9, 13, 20 June) & Jack Swanson (3, 6, 12, & 21 June, as well as the Encounter on 17 June), Doctor Bartolo is Renato Girolami (28 May & 5, 9, 13, 20 June) & Patrick Carfizzi (3, 6, 12, & 21 June, as well as the Encounter on 17 June), Don Basilio is Riccardo Fassi, Berta Catherine Cook, & Fiorello Olivier Zerouali, & to reiterate the dates: 28 May, & 3, 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 20, & 21 June. On 17 June, you can attend The Barber of Seville Encounter, in which part of the opera is performed & then there's a themed party in the lobby. I've never been to one of these but they're popular enough for the Opera to do them regularly.
The other opera on San Francisco Opera's June schedule is a revival of their stunning Keith Warner production of Elektra, with music by Richard Strauss to a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal; Eun Sun Kim conducts, with Elena Pankratova in the title role, Michaela Schuster as Klytemnestra, Elza van den Heever as Chrysothemis, Kyle Ketelsen as Orest, & William Burden as Aegisth. & that's 7, 11, 14, 19, 23, & 27 June.
Festival Opera in association with the San Francisco Early Music Society presents Handel's magnificent Alcina, directed by Zachary Gordin & conducted by Derek Tam, with a cast including Nikola Printz in the title role, Courtney Miller as Ruggiero, Shawnette Sulker as Morgana, Sara Couden as Bradamante, Spencer Greene as Oronte, Nina Jones as Oberto, & Isaiah Musik-Ayala as Melisso; there are concert performances in Hertz Hall on 13 - 14 June as part of the Berkeley Early Music Festival & Exhibition, & then a full production at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek on 19 & 21 June.
Choral
Magen Solomon leads the San Francisco Choral Artists in Love, Lost and Found, a program featuring works by Gesualdo, Clara Schumann, Hensel, di Lasso, Monteverdi, Roger Nixon, Kirke Mechem, Daniel Afonso, Russell Burnham, & Allen Shearer, as well as premieres by Composer-in-Residence Max Marcus & Peter Hilliard, as well as the winning New Voices Project work by Yuri Lee; & that's 31 May at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 6 June at First Lutheran of Palo Alto, & 7 June at Saint Paul's Episcopal in Oakland.
Chanticleer offers American Early Music, a program designed to reflect "the various cultures that shaped early America, . . . Through polyphony, hymns, folk traditions, and spirituals. . . "; you can hear it all on 31 May at Saint John's Lutheran in Sacrament, 1 June at First Congregational in Berkeley, 2 June at Mount Tamalpais UMC in Mill Valley, 5 June at Mission Santa Clara, & 7 June at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.
Artistic Director Chris Filice leads the International Orange Chorale in I Sing the Body Electric, a "vibrant choral program celebrating the beauty, vulnerability, and power of the human body through song. . . . in music exploring embodiment, movement, love, and connection": you can find out what is on the program on 5 June at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco & & June at First Presbyterian in Berkeley.
On 7 June at ODC, Pacific Edge Voices will go on an A Cappella Road Trip with Deke Sharon, a celebration of songs linked to specific American places.
On 12 June at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir will give a Juneteenth Celebration concert.
On 13 June at the Curran Theater, the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus celebrates the music of Dolly Parton.
On 20 June at Old First Concerts, KITKA presents an evening of Balkan, Baltic, Slavic, & Caucasian songs for the Summer Solstice; the ensemble is also celebrating the release of Kolo, "the ensemble’s thirteenth album on their own independent Diaphonica label. . . .The concert (and album) evokes cosmic cycles of creation, growth, destruction, and renewal—the eternal turning of seasons and the shared rhythms of lives and voices woven together".
Vocalists
On 13 June at the Community Music Center of San Francisco, you can hear Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath in Song, a program featuring Dominic Argento's From the Diary of Virginia Woolf & Ned Rorem's Ariel: 5 Poems of Sylvia Plath, performed by soprano Jesslyn Thomas & mezzo-soprano Erin Neff along with pianist Kevin Korth & clarinetist Andrew Friedman.
On 16 June at the Barbro Osher Recital Hall at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Merola Opera Program & San Francisco Opera Center present the third & final of this season's Schwabacher Recital Series, featuring bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen & pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson (who is also Artistic Director of the Opera Center & the Merola Program), along with 2026 Merola Opera Program participants: Shannon Crowley, soprano; Charlotte Kelso, soprano; Chester Seungyup Han, tenor; Ryan Bryce Johnson, tenor; Paul Jang, baritone; & Deven Shah, pianist; together they will perform Ravel's Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, songs by Henri Duparc, Là ci darem la mano from Don Giovanni, Ed or fra noi, parliam da buoni amici from Tosca, & pieces by Rossini, Verdi, Francesco Schira, & Respighi.
On 25 June at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Hume Concert Hall, the Merola Opera program will present L’Anima Napoletana, a selection of Neapolitan songs chosen by Merola faculty member Mario Antonio Marra.
On 26 June, San Francisco Opera presents its annual Pride Concert, hosted by Sapphira Cristál & conducted by Robert Mollicone, with vocalists Nikola Printz, Melody Moore, & Reginald Smith Jr, who will perform works by the late, much lamented Michael Tilson Thomas, as well as Gounod, Giordano, Offenbach, Terence Blanchard, Michael Abels, Stephen Schwartz, kd lang, Brandi Carlile, Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, & others.
Orchestral
On 5 - 6 June, Elim Chan leads the San Francisco Symphony in Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, & Debussy's La Mer. This already looked like a great program, but Chan, of course, has recently been named the next Music Director of the Symphony, so there will be that level of interest & glamor on top of the wonderful pieces she's conducting.
On 7 June at Herbst Theater, Paul Schrage leads the SF Civic Symphony in Mussorgsky's Scherzo in B-flat major, Stravinsky's The Firebird, & Holst's The Planets; the concert is free but RSVPs & donations are gratefully accepted (it's general admission but giving a donation gets you seated first).
On 12 - 14 June, Tianyi Lu leads the San Francisco Symphony in Zhiân by Iman Habibi, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violin Concerto (with soloist María Dueñas), & Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.
On 12 - 14 June at First Presbyterian in Berkeley, Ming Luke leads the Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra in the world premiere of Michael Schachter's Terezin Requiem & Haydn's Theresienmesse in B-flat major.
On 18, 20, & 21 June, James Gaffigan leads the San Francisco Symphony in the Beethoven 9, with vocal soloists Jessica Faselt (soprano), Kelley O’Connor (mezzo-soprano), Thomas Cooley (tenor), & Peixin Chen (bass), as well as the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, led by Jenny Wong; the Symphony is dedicating these performances to the memory of the late Michael Tilson Thomas.
On 20 June at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Robert Mollicone leads the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in Dearly, Queerly, Over the Rainbow, a program featuring Harold Arlen's Concert Suite from The Wizard of Oz, Jake Heggie's Good Morning, Beauty (with vocal soloist Nikola Printz, singing the words of Taylor Mac), & the Brahms 3.
On 21 June in Herbst Theater, John Kendall Bailey leads the SF Civic Symphony in Górecki's Symphony #3, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (with soprano soloist Marnie Breckenridge), along with Chopin's Fantasy on Polish Airs & his Revolutionary Étude played by pianist Daniel Glover; the concert is free but RSVPs & donations are gratefully accepted (it's general admission but giving a donation gets you seated first).
On 21 June at the Chabot College Performing Arts Center in Hayward, Jane Brown leads the Bay Philharmonic in America in Rhythm & Rhapsody, a program featuring Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (with soloist Allegra Chapman), the Dvořák 9, From the New World Symphony, Aaron Copland’s Hoe Down, Saturday Night Waltz, & Fanfare for the Common Man, & José Pablo Moncayo’s Huapango.
On 25 - 27 June, Stéphane Denève leads the San Francisco Symphony in Guillaume Connesson's Flammenschrift, Poulenc's Organ Concerto, & the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony (the latter two pieces feature soloist Olivier Latry).
Chamber
On 2 June at Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco, Noontime Concerts presents violinist Florin Parvulescu & pianist Xak Bjerkin; their program has not yet been announced.
The Friction Quartet (Otis Harriel & Kevin Rogers, violins; Mitso Floor, viola; Doug Machiz, cello) presents Transformations, a program featuring Julia Wolfe's Blue Dress, György Ligeti's String Quartet #1 (Métamorphoses nocturnes), & Haydn's String Quartet opus 76 #6 in E flat Major on 5 June at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco & 6 June at Saint Bede's Episcopal in Menlo Park.
On 13 June at the Noe Valley Ministry, the SF Civic Music Association presents An Afternoon of Chamber Music, featuring Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos, Jason Gibbs's Experiments in Consilience, Gordon Jacob's Swansea Town, Miriam Hyde's Trio for Piano, Flute, Clarinet, & the Brahms Piano Trio in C major, Opus 87.
On 28 June in Davies Hall, a chamber group of San Francisco Symphony musicians will perform Gareth Farr's Taheke, Sarn Oliver's CAT (Contemporary Artful Tonalities) String Quartet, Joan Tower's Petroushskates, & Fauré's Piano Trio in D minor, Opus 12.
On 28 June at Old First Concerts, Duo Soriga (soprano Josephine Lee & gayageum performer-composer Hwayoung Shon) will perform four new pieces by Shon & four new arrangements of traditional Korean tunes.
Instrumental
On 3 June in Davies Hall, the San Francisco Symphony presents violinist Njioma Grevious in recital; with pianist Andrew Goodridge, she will perform a selection from Bach's Sonata in A minor, Within the drifting contours of the land… by Electra Perivolaris, the Scherzo in C minor from the F-A-E Sonata by Brahms, Messiaen's Theme and Variations, Clarence Cameron White's Levee Dance, & Prokofiev's Sonata #2 in D major, Opus 94a.
On 9 June in Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco, Noontime Concerts presents pianist Oliver Moore (his program has not yet been announced).
On 21 June at Old First Concerts, pianist Jason Sia will perform Poème: A Song Without Words by Carmencita Guanzon Arambulo, L’isle joyeuse by Debussy, the Larghetto from Chopin's Piano Concerto #2 as transcribed by Carl Reinecke, Gaspard de la nuit by Ravel, & Earl Wild's Grand Fantasy on Gershwin’s Opera ‘Porgy and Bess’.
See also organist Gail Archer performing Messiaen at the Cathedral of Christ the Light, listed below under Modernist / New Music.
Early / Baroque Music
The big event this month is obviously the biannual Berkeley Early Music Festival & Exhibition (as early-music mavens know, Berkeley does even-numbered years & Boston odd), which launches on 5 June with Bach's Saint John Passion, led by Nicholas McGegan & featuring the Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble & the Cantata Collective (that performances is in far-off, for some of us, Palo Alto, but the program repeats on 7 June in Berkeley) & which concludes on 13 - 14 June with Derek Tam leading the Festival Opera in concert performances in Hertz Hall of Handel's Alcina (there will be fully staged performances later this month in Walnut Creek; see above under Operatic for cast & links). In between there is, of course, lots going on, including gamelan & music from China as well as medieval, Renaissance, & Baroque Europe; check here for the full Festival schedule, but also check here for the wealth of Fringe Festival concerts; there is also the Exhibit, free & open to the public, on 11 - 13 June at the South Wing of First Congregational in Berkeley; click here for more information on the Exhibit & Marketplace & for a list of exhibitors.
Modernist / New Music
On 6 & 7 June at the Ruth Williams Opera House in San Francisco, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble presents the world premiere of Steam by David Dominique, with a libretto by Dominique & Joseph Tepperman, & cinematography by Kevin Everson, along with Stravinsky's A Soldier’s Tale.
On 9 June in Herbst Theater, the ARTZenter Institute & the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players will present another of their concerts, with free admission & no reservation required, featuring the latest winners of their Emerging Composer program; this time the world premieres will be Divided Realities by Eric Estrada Valadez, A Grief Observed by Euna Joh, Memories of Storm & Light by Luca Pasquini, & My Rage is Quiet by Jackson A Waters.
On 20 June at the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, Gail Archer will give an organ recital featuring Messiaen's Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité.
On the Solstice, 21 June, New Music Bay Area presents the beloved annual Garden of Memory Concert at Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland; you can see a line-up of this year's performers here & if you're interested, don't hesitate, as this event tends to sell out. (In fact, since it takes me quite a while to put these lists together, it may be sold out by the time you read this; but I'm not deleting it (I don't list sold-out events) because there may be volunteering opportunities.)
On 26 & 27 June at Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, Other Minds presents Composers Inside Electronics to celebrate A David Tudor Centennial; there are "two evening concerts, as well as an afternoon discussion/demonstration of some of the techniques behind Tudor’s experiments with electronics"; get more information here.
Jazz
On 11 -14 June, SF Jazz presents Afro-Cuban jazz master Chucho Valdés & his Royal Quartet (Valdés on piano, José Armando Gola on bass, Horacio “El Negro” Hernández on drums, Roberto Jr Vizcaino on percussion).
Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass appear at Davies Hall on 16 June.
Dance
On 5 - 6 June at Theater of Yugen's NOHSpace, the U.S./Japan Cultural Trade Network presents Memento Forest — katami, a multimedia dance performance directed & performed by Marina Fukushima, exploring the realities of grieving & remembering a loved one.
On 12 - 13 June at ODC, you can experience the Community Showcase, the "culmination of the spring performance workshops for adult students", featuring a Fusion Bellydance Ismaaouni Performance Workshop with Jill Parker & Maite Gasco; Contemporary Dance with Improvisation & Contact Improvisation (Intermediate) with Suzanne Beahrs; Contemporary Dance and Martial Arts with Daiane Lopes da Silva and Soungyoung Park; ballet with ODC Ballet Director Chris Lam; Ballroom with Rafael Dominguez & Alise Halbert; Contemporary Dance with Erin Yen; Performance and Choreography with Nol Simonse; & Tap with Vanessa Sanchez; there will also be a special guest, Sambaxe.
Mostly Museums
Maren Hassinger: Living Moving Growing, a retrospective highlighting Hassinger's "work across sculpture, performance, video, and installation from the early 1970s to the present", opens at BAM/PFA on 6 June & runs through 29 November.
Ancestral Echoes — Crops of Empire, with work by mixed-media artist Demetri Broxton, opens at MOAD on 10 June & runs through 16 August.
Mildred Howard: Poetics of Memory, the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the Bay Area artist, will display her collages, found-object sculptures, & immersive installations at the Oakland Museum of California starting on 12 June & running through 18 October.
Cinematic
The 25th San Francisco Documentary Festival takes place 28 May to & June; click here for the schedule.
BAM/PFA launches its summer films series this month, starting with French Noir: From the Shadows into the Light on 4 June, a series illustrating "how French cinema has been steeped in the characteristics of film noir through the decades—from the period of Poetic Realism in the 1930s–40s to the Nouvelle Vague beginning in the late 1950s and beyond" (David Thomson will be there to present several films, including Renoir's The Rules of the Game, as part of the launch of his latest book, A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of the Movies); Summer with Monica Vitti begins on 11 June & includes her work with Antonioni as well as a later series of popular comedies; & A Complete Stanley Kubrick, which includes films by other directors that Kubrick was associated with, starts on 12 June.
Brava Theater will present its "very first edition of Scissor Cinema: A Double Feature" with two classic lesbian films, The Watermelon Woman by Cheryl Dunye on 5 June & Saving Face by Alice Wu on 6 June.
From 5 to 11 June, the Roxie Theater, in association with American Cinematheque & "nearly 100 theaters across the country and around the world" presents Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair, which is pretty self-explanatory, & there are some great films in the line-up. (I've just heard about "Bleak Week" programming at movie houses, but apparently it's a nation-wide, if not world-wide thing. I'm all for it!)
As part of their Disney Restoration series, the Orinda Theater will present Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, introduced by Kevin Schaeffer, Director of the Restoration and Library Department of Walt Disney Studios, on 6 June.
On 6 June at the Curran Theater, there will be a 40th anniversary screening of Clue: The Movie with stars Tim Curry & Lesley Ann Warren there in person, which is why I'm listing this, because I recently saw this movie for the first time, knowing that it's a cult classic & has a stellar cast, & "disappointed" doesn't begin to cover my reaction. I found it not only unfunny but really homophobic in its humor, even for a 1980s comedy. If you love the movie, enjoy! If you don't know anything about it, you may want to take a look before you commit your time & money.
On 15 June at the Roxie, you can see The Cocoanuts (yes, that is the correct spelling), the cinematic debut of the Marx Brothers, & if you want to see what a Broadway show would have been like in 1929, this early sound film gives you a good idea.
The 50th Frameline Festival will take place from 17 to 27 June; check here for a schedule of films.
On 19 June at the Curran Theater, there will be a special screening of Airplane!, with an in-person discussion after the show with stars Julie Hagerty & Robert Hays.
On 20 June at Brava Studio, Brava Theater Center presents Brava’s Short Block “Queer Resilience” ; see here for more information.
On 26 June at the Paramount in Oakland, you can see Walt Disney's Fantasia.
